Life through the eyes of a State Park Ranger's wife

Month

July 2016

Disclaimer: This is not sponsored by Disney or boxed cake mix companies, though I wouldn’t mind being sponsored by Disney.

I’ve been watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with my son, D, lately and with watching Disney Junior you can see a lot of Disney Family crafts or recipes. So I wanted to try my hand at being creative. However, with a toddler running around and a husband at work it is a little hard to spend a lot of time on something too time consuming. It also helped that our local grocery store had a huge sale on boxed cake mixes. Only 88¢! While I know that most think less of boxed cakes (or cupcakes in this case), but I find that when you aren’t in the mood to spend a lot of time baking or you are short on all the ingredients needed for a cake made from scratch these boxed cake mixes can be a life saver. And with a price so low it didn’t hurt to stock up. I decided to make chocolate fudge cupcakes inspired by Mickey Mouse, D’s favorite. And with your own boxed cake mix you can do the same!

Quick instructions:

All you need to do is make a boxed cake mix and put the mix into lined cupcake pans. The mix usually makes about 24 cupcakes.

While your cupcakes are in the oven, pour some chocolate chips or melting chocolate into a microwavable bowl. Melt the chocolate in the microwave in 15 second increments, stirring after each time, until the chocolate is melted.

With the melted chocolate take a spoon and place a dollop of chocolate onto a silicone baking sheet or parchment paper. Use your spoon to create a circle for Mickey Mouse’s head. With a smaller bit of chocolate repeat the process to create Mickey Mouse’s ears.

Chocolate Mickey Mouse heads

After creating the chocolate Mickey Mouses place them in the freezer or refrigerator (where ever you have room) so they can set. I had to do that in shifts since both our freezer and refrigerator are pretty full.

When your cupcakes are done and have cooled you can frost them. I used another time saver, pre-made frosting and used red food coloring to turn the vanilla frosting red. Then frost your cupcakes.
(Though I happened to run out of red food coloring and tried to use red sprinkles to supplement. And when I ran out of that I used the pinkish frosting with a different set of sprinkles and called those cupcakes Toodles. You can add the sprinkles too.)

Once the chocolate Mickey Mouse heads have set, place one on each cupcake. You can place them upright or flat on the cupcakes.
Mickey Mouse Cupcake (upright)Mickey Mouse Cupcakes (flat)“Toodles” cupcakes

Hopefully, these cupcakes inspire you to create your own! Enjoy and happy baking!